Japan nuclear firm admits missing safety checks at disaster-hit plant

According to documents from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the company repeatedly missed safety checks over a 10-year period up to two weeks before the 11 March disaster, and allowed uranium fuel rods to pile up inside the 40-year-old facility.

When the plant was struck by a huge earthquake and tsunami, its reactors, designed by US scientists 50 years ago, contained the equivalent of almost six years of highly radioactive uranium fuel produced by the facility, according to a presentation Tepco gave to the International Atomic Energy Agency and later posted on the company's website.

I don't get it, safety checks at a nuclear power plant are a no-brainer. When it comes to cutting costs safety should be the LAST thing to go.



And, even more alarming:

When disaster struck earlier this month, the plant contained almost 4,000 uranium fuel assemblies kept in pools of circulating water – the equivalent of more than three times the amount of radioactive material usually kept in the active cores of the plant's reactors.

Click here to read more.

Good catch!

Added these details to this other thread about the whole "nuclear emergency" in Japan thing.

Originally posted by v1rtu0s0

According to documents from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the company .... allowed uranium fuel rods to pile up inside the 40-year-old facility.

When disaster struck earlier this month, the plant contained almost 4,000 uranium fuel assemblies kept in pools of circulating water – the equivalent of more than three times the amount of radioactive material usually kept in the active cores of the plant's reactors.

Click here to read more.

Thats some scary facts there, this is where the radiation is coming from...

"That unknown source"